The emerging tidal power sector seems to have taken another step forward — an Edinburgh-headquartered firm said Monday that its project had achieved a world first by producing 50 gigawatt hours of electricity.

“During the early hours of this morning … our tidal stream array off the coast of the Pentland Firth became the first tidal stream array in the world to generate 50GWh of electricity,” Graham Reid, the CEO, said in a statement.

Reid described the news as a “significant milestone in delivering tidal stream power at scale.”

Photo: The Pentland Firth, John McSporran

The MeyGen site has been operational since 2017 with turbines located 20m below the surface off the North Coast of Scotland, where the exchange of water between the North Sea and the North Atlantic is squeezed between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Isles. This site has some of the strongest tidal flows found anywhere in the world and presents a predictable source of renewable electricity.

CNBC covered the story and said that ‘though there’s excitement about the potential of marine energy, the footprint of tidal stream projects remains much smaller than that of other renewables.

In data released in March 2022, trade association Ocean Energy Europe said 2.2 MW of tidal stream capacity was installed in Europe in 2021, up from just 260 KW in 2020. Globally, 3.12 MW of tidal stream capacity was installed.

By way of comparison, Europe installed 17.4 gigawatts of wind power capacity in 2021, according to figures from industry body WindEurope’

Reid closed his statement saying “Tidal can and does work, we just need to get more turbines in the water”

The story in CNBC can be read here and the full news release from SAE can be read here.